Iowa Twitter Success
by Patrick Ruffini :: January 4th, 2008 1:21 amWhen I first floated the idea of collecting Iowa Caucus results through the microblogging social network Twitter, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Iowa is a small state, and not particularly known for tech-savviness. Would I find anyone willing to whip out their phone in the middle of a caucus and text in the results?
Thanks to @podcastmama, @jakebouma, @chrisken, @kevin_s, @yogagirl, @heatherbrie, TechPresident’s very own @mbassik, @rwclark, @stuartma, @timmytims, @scottatdrake, @LostAirman, @nathantwright, @chanzi, @mrswhitsitt, and more, we now know the answer.
And it wasn’t just noise either. Very shortly after 7 p.m. central time, all the reports were pointing in a single direction: a big night for Barack Obama. This led me to post at 7:20 p.m. that the trendlines were for Obama, long before the media caught on. Though I figured most of these tweets came from urban and university precincts, the 2- and 3-to-1 advantages I was seeing consistently were clearly enough to overcome even a mighty Clinton and Edwards surge in more rural parts of the state. To see how the evening unfolded, check out our 70+ updates right here.
From a partisan perspective, I do wish we’d had more than three or four Republicans in this bunch, though I did know that the Democrats — with their multiple rounds of voting — would provide for more interesting coverage. Even more people participated via email and text messages — showing the ease with which one could implement an open, lightweight, distributed election day reporting system as a refresh to the closed, bulky, proprietary systems operated by the parties.
So I’m calling this experiment an unqualified success. This exercise in citizen journalism foretold the result far more quickly than dispatching two dozen stringers to caucus locations throughout Iowa. Post-macaca, predictions abounded of citizens armed with camera phones bringing us live coverage of everything. It hasn’t happened… yet… but we saw a glimpse of the future tonight in Iowa. Perhaps the era of blogs and YouTube is giving way to the age of Twitter and UStream (sorry, can’t help it… disclosure).
Tagged: 2008 
epolitics iowa technology twitter
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Patrick
It’s been an interesting night. I enjoyed your coverage!
I’m surprised there weren’t any “macaca moments” in Iowa, too, but the campaign is still young.
Hi. From one of the participants (rwclark), thanks for the experiment. I thought it was a cool idea even though people had no idea what I was talking about when I told them I was twittering the caucus.
Great idea and really appreciated. Any comments you have on how social media is and could be impactful on the process moving forward would be very interesting to read.
It was fun to participate… maybe a bigger effort can be organized for other states and then eventually the general election?
I loved your Twitter feed during the caucuses! I’d refresh my Twitter home page…and there would be your new Twits with the info…before they were announced on MSNBC. I’d agree with you that it was an unqualified success! Huge thanks to all who participated in Iowa.
Thanks, Patrick. That was a blast. Like Ryan, I had a tough time explaining to people what I was doing. After failing to explain twitter, I finally resorted to, “I’m part of a live-blogging experiment.” It was great to get your updates and fun feeling like I was part of something that was being watched from around the country. @scottatdrake
I’d be intrigued to see how you could adapt this for poll-watching by actual GOTV operations on election day.
Yeah thanks for organizing this, I had a great time. It was fun to do group live-blogging when any single person would not have enough info to do an individual live blog. Let’s do it again.
[…] It’s fascinating stuff to follow his Twitter feed for the night, as he tallies the precinct totals he was getting for the Democractic caucuses, mainly in more liberal college towns. Ruffini noted that the Obama momentum was pretty strong much earlier than any TV reports I saw. Here’s how he explains his Twitter success on his blog at the end of the night: Very shortly after 7 p.m. central time, all the [Twitter] reports were pointing in a single direction: a big night for Barack Obama. This led me to post at 7:20 p.m. that the trendlines were for Obama, long before the media caught on. Though I figured most of these tweets came from urban and university precincts, the 2- and 3-to-1 advantages I was seeing consistently were clearly enough to overcome even a mighty Clinton and Edwards surge in more rural parts of the state. From a partisan perspective, I do wish we’d had more than three or four Republicans in this bunch, though I did know that the Democrats — with their multiple rounds of voting — would provide for more interesting coverage. Even more people participated via email and text messages — showing the ease with which one could implement an open, lightweight, distributed election day reporting system as a refresh to the closed, bulky, proprietary systems operated by the parties. So I’m calling this experiment an unqualified success. This exercise in citizen journalism foretold the result far more quickly than dispatching two dozen stringers to caucus locations throughout Iowa. […]
[…] Poco dopo le 19, con largo anticipo rispetto ai media tradizionali, Ruffini ha segnalato che i dati ricevuti indicavano la vittoria di Obama. La sua analisi indica che chi ha contribuito si trovava presumibilmente in distretti più urbanizzati e caratterizzati dalla presenza di università, ma spiega anche che l’entità dei risultati era tale da bilanciare anche un’eventuale vittoria di Clinton ed Edwards nelle parti più rurali dello stato. […]
[…] The outcome, wrote Ruffini a day later on his blog, was impressive: “This exercise in citizen journalism foretold the result far more quickly than dispatching two dozen stringers to caucus locations throughout Iowa.” […]
[…] Jeremiah Owyang is a huge Internet celebrity on the west coast. He’s a researcher at Forrester who writes about Social Media. Last weekend, he conducted a Twitter experiment where Twitterers would tweet their ratings of Super Bowl commercials. It was a cute experiment, but also a bit lame after Patrick Ruffini’s amazing Iowa Caucus Twitter project. Using an Iowa08 Twitter account, he was able to call the caucus for Barack Obama way before the mainstream media had any idea what was going on. It was an unqualified success. […]